Hello to 2019!! I can finally step off the rollercoaster of a year that was 2018 and continue through this dark carnival of the past few years to see what happens next (like, do I finally get to exit into a garden of chocolate and lattes?). This post is a roundup of my 2018 writing progress. If you want to see what I had published last year, you go to the Stories link. I will be posting a roundup of my favorite fiction before the end of the month.

But onward!!

In January of last year, I had a piece accepted at Cotton Xenomorph. This was a piece I started at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in Fiction the previous summer, and I completed it for Cotton Xenomorph (as the original ending wasn't really an ending). This was "Rose Garden Funeral of Sorts." Working with Cotton Xenomorph was a delight. They paired beautiful art with my story, and went on to nominate it for Best of the Net. Truly amazing.

In March, I sold "The Hollow Tree" to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This story published in November of last year and ended up reviewed favorably by several people. This was a story I wrote specifically for Beneath Ceaseless Skies after Scott Andrews asked that I send him "more creepy fairy stories." The story concerns domestic violence and miscarriage, so it may be a difficult story to read for some people.

While "The Hollow Tree" was my third piece I sold to BCS Magazine. The second piece I sold (a novelette) was published in June of 2018. This story, "Three Dandelion Stars," means a lot to me, personally. It concerns two women in love against all odds, and swamp fairies. Basically two great things? Maybe? The novelette wound up on Charles Payseur's Best of 2018 list, and Jason Sanford's Best Fiction of the First Half of 2018 list. Doesn't this look like a great year for me? And we're not even done yet.

Also in June, I sold "Jewel of the Vashwa" to Apex Magazine (a dream market) for their Zodiac Issue, edited by Sheree Thomas. I'm thrilled to have a piece chosen by Sheree, as I love her editorial eye. "Jewel of the Vashwa" is a story of passion and lies, war, and Scorpion Men. The Zodiac Issue published in August, and my story ended up in Barnes & Noble's Sci-Fi Blog's Short Fiction Roundup for August, and on several Best of 2018 lists. It is my favorite piece that published last year.

What else did I accomplish? I wrote three drafts of a novel (one a total rewrite), and then started querying that novel back in October. I sent queries to twenty Agents in 2018. Before the end of the year, I received ten rejections, two requests for the full manuscript, and the rest are still pending (which could mean... nothing at all).

I also wrote eighteen short stories (some of them flash, omg). I sent off 56 submissions!! (Forty-three were rejected, sixteen of those rejections were personal, five sold.) I sold four stories to magazines or anthologies at pro-rates. Some to brand new places like A Punk Rock Future and one that *CENSORED* ... well, I'm thrilled, even though I can't talk about it. .

Last year I also started writing poetry, and wrote a whole seven poems!! I know, I went bananas!! And while they're all very well received by my World of Warcraft roleplay guild, they're not quite publication ready. That won't stop me trying, though. I mean, why not try?

What else did I do? I said I started writing flash, right? Well my two pending 2019 publications are flash... how did that happen? I co-wrote a story for the first time. And I even launched a Patreon in September and met my $50 goal before the end of the year!!

All that coupled with my amazing trip to the Futurescapes Workshop and the great time I had at the Nebula Conference, 2018 was a wonderful year for my career, my productivity, and my growth.

While I don't expect to repeat this success in 2019, that doesn't mean I'm not going to try. I'm currently 15,000 words into my next novel project, and have a story ready to revise for Uncanny's Disabled People Destroy Fantasy. (Plus those seven pending submissions I have out.) I'm looking forward to what 2019 has for me! But of course, I have to be the one to do the work.

A quick update for all of you. The Apex Zodiac issue came out last month, edited by the wonderful Sheree Thomas. She picked an amazing crop of stories and I’m honored that my Scorpio story, “Jewel of the Vashwa” is among them.

It deals with vengeance and lies; betrayal and war. It has two cultures who are at odds, but also in love. And one of them is the Scorpion Men of the Ratch; the other are the soft skinned women of the Vashwa.

I just got back from World Fantasy Con in San Antonio, where I had a great time. Unlike my trip to the Nebula Awards in Pittsburgh, James didn't come with us. So Stella and I had to fly solo. Also this time, I couldn’t rely on James to win over everyone so I didn't have to. This time I had to smile big and laugh big to charm everyone, not let him do it for me.

But I did it! And it was fun! It's all Stella's doing! Yay Stella!

I talked to so many people; I did so many new things. I did not hang back in the back and let the conversation happen around me. I did not stand on the periphery and wait for people to talk to me. Guys, I went out to lunch with strangers to a totally new restaurant and ate food I had never even heard of before.

This is huge. Four months ago, I couldn't go out to eat with strangers. And if it was a new restaurant, I had to see the menu a week in advance so I could choose two menu items. One first choice, and one backup--in case they were out of my first choice. But I totally nailed this lunch! I didn't even panic once!

This makes me feel better about future trips and future Cons. I am not so afraid anymore about meeting new people because I didn't die in a puddle of my own embarrassment in Texas. I didn't even make a fool of myself in front of anyone famous, or any of my friends. It was a total win. (And I know this cause I haven't had a single anxiety dream since I got back.)

But what future trips? What future cons you say?! Why don't I tell you about them! Yep. It's another post of news and updates where I tell you what I'll be up to in the next six months so you can track with me.

I’ll be at ConFusion in January. I’ll be going with my friend and awesome writer Sarah Hans. I have never been to ConFusion before, but I've heard such great things about it, I gotta go. So this year's the year. Sarah and I will be there January 19th-21st. If you’re going, I’ll be the tall redhead with the black service dog. Say hello!

In April, I’ll be at the Futurescapes Workshop in Utah. I got in last month and I’m super excited to meet people and level up my writing on the novel I started in May. I’ll be at there from April 16th-18th (subject to change based on flights). If you’re going, follow me on Twitter (@jskurella) so we can connect.

And then James and I are going to the SFWA Nebula Conference again! I can't wait for this. We had a great time last year and are looking forward to a repeat in 2018. We’re getting there earlier and staying later, partly so we can see more Pittsburgh friends, but also so we can spend more time with our writer friends. We’ll be there from May 17th-May 21st.

Also, in publication news! My love story novelette about swamp fairies and wish magic will be coming out in May or June of 2018. Keep an eye out for it in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. (It's called Three Dandelion Stars.) I love working with Scott at Beneath Ceaseless Skies and I am very proud of this project and the work Scott and I did on it to make it perfect for his magazine.

I probably should have. I now know, from the last three plus years of writing fiction, that it would have helped me a lot. Writing has been for me not only a new career, but a new life. It has been a new way of looking at life, and at myself.

I’ve discovered a lot about myself through writing. But not when I’m writing memoir type stuff; I discovered these things when writing fiction. I discovered this stuff when writing about characters in other worlds, in other times, dealing with problems that I, myself, have never had to deal with.

In the past three years, I have written about: women in love with other women; governments that were women-run; women coming face to face with their own death; a shitton of fairies; and domestic violence. I have written a lot about women learning to cope with their mental illness, women discovering that they are queer, and women who are not traditionally beautiful still finding love and acceptance in a world that is (in its own way) traditional.

In the past three years, I have discovered that I am bisexual. I have discovered that I’ve got deep-seated ableist views of my own mental illness. I discovered that I am stronger, more capable, and more ready to take on what the world throws at me than I ever thought possible. Most importantly, I discovered that I’m not a victim—I’m a fighter.

So far in 2017, I’ve written over 110,000 words. And that’s a low estimate. It only includes the final word counts for the six completed stories, one set-aside novel, and one nearly-completed first draft of a novel that I’ve punched out this year. It does not include the multiple drafts of the stories that were written, rewritten, and rewritten. It does not include all the research notes for the novel I am currently working on. It does not include all the outline notes for the stories or two novels. It does not include blog posts.

This year also brought something else. My writing in 2017 brought a lot of introspection. It brought on a rash of questions such as: Why Am I Writing This? What Part Of Me Is Infecting My Writing? Why Am I Bringing This To The World Now? What Does This Piece Say About Me? This year has been full of that kind of thing as I’ve not only been writing a lot, but I’ve also been battling symptoms of psychosis, mania, depression, and weeks upon weeks of anxiety attacks.

So how did I discover what I discovered? Let’s start with the big one:

In the late 1990s, I dated a few women. Just went on a couple of dates. Exchanged a few kisses. Nothing more. Then I dated this guy Mike. Then, quickly after that relationship, I started dating my husband James. That relationship is still going very very well, as we all know. I wrote off my few dates with women in the late 90s as a “phase” although I still felt attraction. But I have a firm stance on monogamy, so I told myself that I couldn’t be gay, so why even think that I’m bisexual?

Then (almost 20 years later) I started writing queer love stories. I’ve written five (the first one I wrote will be published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies next year). I started writing them in the spring of 2016, and it wasn’t until the summer of 2017 that the knowledge that I am bisexual was so strong, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. So I came out to James. He has been, and continues to be, very supportive. We are staying married and monogamous.

Onto the next thing:

I started looking at my feelings toward the culture of misogyny that the United States has cultivated and still cultivates, and my anger surrounding that. A lot of it, in the stories, comes out very violently and I don’t want to portray any idea of misandry. I have several very good friends that are men, and don’t harbor any hatred toward men in general, only toward misogyny. So I recently started including male characters who support and value women and aren’t misogynists.

But I have a lot of internalized misogyny. A lot of ideas about beauty standards and what is attractive and what is acceptable in society—both our society and any societies I conjure up. Those ideas were very prevalent in the first novel that I was working on, and I am doing my best to challenge them in this current novel. I am trying to take things that I know are often found unattractive for both men and women, and still find ways for my characters to be attracted to one another (and find these “unattractive” qualities attractive).

And then the next, and another big, thing:

The ableism toward myself was most surprising, and took the longest for me to overcome (aside from realizing my own sexuality—which took 20 years). I wrote two stories dealing with mental illness, both science fiction, both of which had endings I was okay with. But both of the endings needled at the back of my brain for months as the stories were rejected again and again.

It took two things to change them: a critique from Sarah Gailey on the first; and in the second, a writer’s workshop to talk about the Single Story that marginalized people often only get to read. Sarah Gailey pointed out (with the first story) that I had used the trope of “disabled person helps able-bodied person figure their shit out.” Which was totally not what I was going for. In the second story, I had told yet another tale of the “violent and suicidal psychotic person.” These things are so ingrained in my head that I wrote them as Just A-OK Endings.

But I didn’t want Ableist A-OK endings, because they’re not A-OK. So the next time each story was rejected, I brought them in, and worked for weeks or sometimes months to get new, not-ableist endings. The first story took me a few weeks to get it right; the second story took me almost four months.

The first story (which is about depression) is still being rejected, but often with tons of positive comments. The second’s ending is done, but it’s in another set of revisions thanks to Lucy Snyder. It’ll get done, but not soon. I have a novel I have to finish, dammit. Priorities, priorities.

I am disabled but it took a long time for me to see my own ableism in regards to myself. Thanks to Kate Craig, I am trying to get the words “crazy” and “insane” out of my vocabulary. (Replacing them with “bananapants” is way more fun anyway.) It’s working. I’m seeing how damaging those words are when they’re used to describe someone who isn’t bananapants, but is just plain evil.

My last therapist asked me to journal all the time; she suggested it maybe once a month as a way to get feelings out, or to figure out the root of a problem that was bothering me. Perhaps if I had taken her advice, I would have understood my sexuality far sooner, or gotten to the core of my ableist feelings, or realized exactly how angry I am at our culture.

She is a very smart woman, my last therapist. She helped me a lot. But I’m glad that my writing, a lot of it still unsold, has helped me figure my shit out as much as it has. I’m glad that I’m introspective enough to look at it and realize: What does this mean for me? How much of myself is in this? How much of my views am I pounding into this thing and how accurate are those feelings on the page?

We all have an agenda when we write because we’re all writing from our own perspective and paradigm. Sometimes our agenda can surprise us—it certainly surprised me a couple of times—other times it surprises other people. But our best bet is to be aware of our own agendas and see how they can help or even damage others, or sometimes even help or even damage ourselves.